


Beginning to Fade (The Nightmare)

by kumulonimbus



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drama, Drama & Romance, F/M, Mcsombra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 12:54:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15819288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kumulonimbus/pseuds/kumulonimbus
Summary: The aftermath of a fight, the eternal doubt that plagues him - is she real, or a mere figment of his imagination, meant to placate his loneliness?(Deleted scene from Variations on a Theme / McSombra)





	Beginning to Fade (The Nightmare)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a scene I deleted from Variations on a Theme because the chapter was already too long - just came across the file as I was going through some old drafts and decided to share it. It's not necessary to read Variations to understand this short vignette. Hope you enjoy.

_I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead._

_(I think I made you up inside my head.)_

Sylvia Plath – Mad girl’s love song

-

 

The professional fugitive handbook says you're supposed to fight about stuff. Eventually. Claims every cowboy should keep their boots on at all times, and at all costs. And if his momma were here, she’d be damn proud of her only child, even if her voice has already begun to fade from his memories, and even if this landscape reminds him of his most recurrent nightmares – reeking of alcohol and cheap confusion, blurry and unorthodox, just like _her_.

But back to the stillness of his weary soul, and deep inside the core that defines him as a man, he knows: if only his mother could see him right now, as he voices out his opinions and presents his arguments with impeccable coherence, he’d make the woman proud. At last.

The star-crossed child with a talent for sin and an appetite for blood reigns supreme between these walls. But the same walls that contain him are not enough to keep her around and now, when his smile glows in the eloquent words that leave his mouth his mind can no longer remember what he’s even fighting about. The hacker smiles in return, even when he’s positive she’s losing the argument, and soon her smile will be the one part of her that lingers in space – so he reaches out, grabs her by the wrists, and interrupts her magic.

Not this time, my dear.

Not again.

_Pause._

_The escapist demands a moment of peace or else she won’t be here (his) anymore._

_He obliges, he has no other choice._

In this manufactured vacuum, emptiness looks sharper somehow. _Hey, Joel_. Enough. _Hey, Joel_ – that’s it. _Identity_.

“You know that’s not my name,” he says as he sits down on the bed – but she doesn’t join him, “we’ve talked about this a million times already,”

There’s an insidious smile that adorns those lips of hers. But no words leave her mouth. This is completely unlike her – she’s not friends with silence. She tries to fade from his sight once more, but artificial fingers keep her chained to that room.

“Don’t do that,” he says, “every time you disappear on me I can’t even figure out whether you’re here with me or not,” the man lowers his head, envious of the very same invisibility he dislikes so much.

She shrugs her shoulders, turning her back.

“That’s the point,”

_Hey, Joel._

Not now.

“I’m not used to it,” he confesses, “I don’t like the feeling – when everything boils down to a simple matter of faith; I’m not a man of faith, you can’t ask me to simply have faith and believe that even if I can’t see you, you’re still here with me,”

Eyes that have seen too much, her mouth is not a temple – and her love is not a religion. Faith, he says, the epitome of everything they can never touch, is not enough to synthesize her.

“Faith? I don’t want your faith,” this time, his hands cannot keep her there. She vanishes from the room, and her voice trails off, as every word lingers before him, “I’m not a saint,”

_Hey, Joel._

(Wait. Come back.)

This city does not speak his language. This rain does not match his thirst for summer. This empty motel room lacks the warmth of their reality – and the hours that follow quickly become a labyrinth for the man to recognize her bits and pieces. Is she still there, or is she gone? Was she ever really here? The light outside his window makes him turn around but it’s only lighting, illuminating the broken night. The light that dies in the bathroom, the open door that catches no sign of life. The waltz of the curtains in the wind. The smell of her favorite drink on his nightstand. And what if the sun does not break tomorrow? What if this world becomes somber and obscure – what about that shadow that craves the light to justify its existence?

There’s an interrupted sex scene in his head, and only one arm resting on the bed. Signs of incompletion, disguised in the romance of her absence and her presence, tangled together as if they were the exact same thing – like the wrong name in the right face: perhaps she’s right. Perhaps she was right all along. A name is but a name and, it seems, he’s got it all wrong: faith and trust are not synonyms, absence and presence are but momentary solutions to a problem no-one has addressed.

He turns around, looks over his shoulder and becomes the flickering lights fading out in the streets, the vicious thunder that breaks the night into a million different pieces, the agonic light still coming from the bathroom, the dancing curtains and the smell of her favorite drink. Was she ever really here, to begin with, or was she a mere figment of his imagination, meant to palliate his loneliness?

_An existence crafted only to mitigate the void?_

_That seems awfully burdensome, Joel._

There’s an incomplete sex scene in his eyes, and the clock strikes five; her voice surprises him with unprecedented amusement but it’s just the TV and the smell of her favorite drink slaps him hard across the face. Was she ever really here? Is she really gone now? He remembers what her emptiness feels like, sees his own face in the mirror as he clings to her body with an urgency that seems strangely familiar - he’d gladly fuck a hole through the mattress just to prove her real once more but the gentle rain gives way to the storm, the furious lighting recreates the way she moves and the sun doesn’t break today. In the weird city of darkness and silence, the cowboy finally takes off his boots and rests his head on the pillow.

The professional fugitive handbook says you're supposed to fight about stuff.

_Eventually._

“Sweet dreams, Joel,” he mumbles to himself as he drifts off to sleep. But only the rain outside his window echoes the sound of her laughter.


End file.
